I destroyed a book...

Zdravo!

Now, you are probably looking at the title and thinking 'WHAT?!' 'ASDFGHJKL' 'I can't even...' and all sorts of other things, but I assure you, it was for a good cause! And that cause happened to be my friends birthday present. Before you start kicking and screaming, let me explain... (Also, please excuse the dodgy photos, I've managed to lose my good ones and only have the ones from my phone to use.)

A few years ago (I think) I saw a photo of a book safe. (If you don't know what a book safe is, it's basically a hollowed out book that can be used to store stuff and keep things safe.) I immediately fell in love with the idea and actually brought a 'fake' one last year whilst I was away. It was never actually a book though, but was designed to look like one.

Anyway, back to the present story... For this friend, I knew I definitely wanted to make her something cool, and something she would like. So I decided on making a book safe. I know that she really likes reading, and positive quotes, so I put them together and came up with a book inside a book. I found a tiny book full of positive quotes that I wanted to give her (and some little chocolate bunnies) and then proceeded to try and find a suitable book to hollow out. It's actually much harder than it looks...

I didn't want to buy a brand new one, I wanted to find one that was slightly older and had a bit more character. Also, buying a book that had already been owned and read made me feel slightly less bad about cutting it up, because at least it had already fulfilled its purpose. I found this book 'Firesong' in a local charity shop, and instantly loved the cover beneath the dust jacket! It was actually the main reason I chose the book in the first place. It was a perfect size and thickness for what I wanted to use it for. (I also tried to read a little of it, but didn't like it at all, which is another reason it was perfect to cut up!)

I made a template from some old card to the size hole I wanted and used a Stanley knife to cut. Be sure to make sure you have a sharp knife or you will end up with some very jagged cuts, like mine did! I only cut through about 5/6 pages at a time to try and keep it as straight as possible. You can choose how deep to cut, I chose to stopabout 3/4 of the way down because it was deep enough to fit the little book (which I also seem to have lost the photo for too! Sorry)

Once I had finished cutting the pages out, I tidied the edges up a little and used a makeup brush to remove all the excess paper from between the pages. The hole was just big enough for the little book of positivity to fit in once it was wrapped, and to make sure it held properly, I tied it shut with a big silver bow, just to make it look even prettier.

I hope you guys have forgiven me for cutting up a book, it did make a nice present though! Last weeks language was Turkish, as guessed by the lovely Nicky over at teaandtakeaways.wordpress.com, who says that it is her favourite country! I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Love, Grace x